Meet Larry & Gary

I'd like you to meet one of my first sewing creations - Larry the Lamb.  He's been part of the family for a few years now, although I think it did take me about a year to finish him! He's from the Tone Finnanger Tilda books range - Crafting Springtime Gifts.  I have all of her books, and I love sitting looking through them. I do have a bad habit of buying craft books, and doing just the reading, so I was pleased that I actually made something from this book.

Larry is made from a hand towel, a white one from John Lewis, he's a posh lamb!  The instructions were really easy to follow, and the sewing bits were too, although I preferred the machine stitching of the body to the slightly fiddly hand sewing to attach the feet to the legs, the hands to the arms, the arms to the body and the ears to the head.  I'd seen some slightly dodgy attempts on the Internet, and I wanted mine to turn out as cute as they were in the book. 

Larry was eyeless for many months, I never got round to finishing him off.  He's got eyes now, but they are just glass headed pins, so he's not a very child friendly toy. 

He's been on a few trips away with me, here he is coming on a car journey with me.

Larry ready in the back of the car to go on his holidays.

Larry sat on the wall over looking Scotland.

Larry looking sad out of the window when he was left in the hotel for the day.

Larry with his Christmas Santa hat on.

Larry having a sit in the rosemary bush outside.  Mmmmm lamb and rosemary mmmmm!

This is Larry putting on his jumper that Judith (my sister) made for him.

The ball of wool that Larry's jumper was made from was bigger than he was!

This is the beginnings of Gary.  This is the easy part of making the lambs, the pieces that are sewed on the machine. Gary was Judith's creation, I think she enjoyed the cutting and machine stitching but then gave up when it got to the fiddly bits of attaching the arms and legs, so I've just finished him off recently for her.

Here he is stuffed, but with no ears or arms attached yet. He's lovely and plump, it was very funny when Judith was trying to get his stuffing in the right places and then massaging him to get it all even.

Finally, here's a picture of the finished Gary. I hope he gets to go on as many outings as Larry has been on.

Wedding Bunting

As mentioned on my last post, making the sign wasn't the only bit of crafting I volunteered for, for Nev & Kate's wedding.  Kate had mentioned that she was thinking of making some bunting, and I said I'd help, having some sewing machine skills.  So one Friday evening, I went to theirs with my sewing machine, pins and pinking shears ready to make a few triangles.  I'd never made bunting before, so the first few were trial and error, and eventually we decided on a design.  When I asked how much they wanted, Kate said "60m". I wasn't really sure how many triangles that was, so she set Nev on with the maths task, and when he pulled a funny face and said "Erm, it's about 300...." I nearly fell off my chair! We got started on a production line on their kitchen floor, and got marking with the chalks, cutting and pining. 

By the end of the evening, we realised we'd need a few more meters of fabric, so I headed home with my triangles ready to be stitched, and they headed back to the market for more fabric.  A week or so later, I returned with what I'd done so far, and then got started with the next lot.  You know you've done a lot of crafting when your hands bleed - the pinking shears had rubbed a big blister into my thumb from all the cutting!

Eventually, I had all the triangles sewn and cut. Next came pining them to the seam binding tape.  This took a while, as you can imagine.  Luckily, a friend offered to help with this, which made it easier, and soon was sewing.  Rusty offered assistance here too, watch those pins in your paws!

Finally, I got it all finished, and was very pleased with it, and hoped they were too.  I didn't know exactly how they were planning to display it at the reception, so you can imagine my delight when I walked in and saw this.

This was a board for a jigsaw, pieces were scattered on each of the tables, and it made into a picture of the happy couple.

A few weeks later, the bunting went on another trip out, this time for Kylie's hen do, to decorate the barge we went on from Shipley.  We had afternoon tea and bubbly to keep us going on the journey!

I hope the bunting gets to go on more trips out!